Selling homemade tamales leads to failing score for Colorado Springs restaurant

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) - The Viva El Taco Mexican Food restaurant on North Academy near Vickers landed at the bottom of this week’s health inspection list. 

It failed its inspection on February 27 with 11 violations, and subsequently failed its re-inspection on March 6. 

On those dates, the inspector found there was no certified food protection manager on shift as required. 

The restaurant was also selling tamales that were prepared at someone's home instead of in an authorized kitchen. 

Several items in the kitchen were also found to not have dates on them, including tamales and guacamole. 

When KRDO13 stopped Viva El Taco on Tuesday to ask about the violations, the manager and owner were out, but a worker said he was unaware that homemade food wasn’t allowed to be sold in restaurants. 

Even though we left a phone number for the owner or manager to explain additional violations, no one ever contacted KRDO13. 

Viva El Taco passed its second re-inspection on March 13, with only two violations. 

The Paleteria La Chilindrina at 574 S Academy near Airport Road also received a failing score last week. 

The inspector found 13 violations there.

They include employees preparing food without first washing hands, dehydrating meat without a special permit to do so, and keeping food at temperatures slightly warmer than what’s allowed. 

Even though the restaurant was supposed to be open when KRDO13 stopped by on Tuesday afternoon, the door was locked and there was no voicemail to leave a message. 

As of March 13, Paleteria La Chilindrina was still awaiting its re-inspection. 

The Wobbly Olive at 3317 Cinema Point near Powers and North Carefree also failed its inspection last week. 

There, the inspector witnessed one of the cooks drink a personal beverage and then go back to preparing food without washing their hands. 

Some of the food in the cooler was older than the maximum 7 days. 

Also, drinks were being dumped into the trash can out back instead of down the drain as required. 

The owners were extremely open and transparent, inviting KRDO13 inside to discuss the violations. 

The owner described the violations as “opportunities for improvement” in an ongoing effort to maintain a clean restaurant. 

He said some of the staff have received additional training, and all the managers took a course Wednesday to become Certified Food Protection Managers, a relatively new requirement in the industry. 

He added that every deficiency was corrected within 24 hours. 

One of those corrections was a unique way of straining solid foods out of discarded drinks using two 5-gallon buckets.

The upper bucket has a series of drilled holes so that the liquid can drain into the lower bucket and be poured down an approved drain, while the upper bucket allows the solid waste to be discarded in the trash.

The owner said the restaurant also lost points because a required poster outlining procedures for a vomiting or diarrhea event had fallen off the wall onto the ground, one of numerous violations unrelated directly to food safety.

He showed KRDO13 several copies of those instructions that can now be easily re-posted as needed.

The Wobbly Olive passed its re-inspection on March 12 with just a single violation. 

On the other end of the spectrum, a number of restaurants received high marks on their health inspections. 

The Panda Express at 4446 Ventucci and also the location at 5071 North Academy received perfect scores, as well as the Baskin Robbins inside Chapel Hills Mall, and the Taco Bell at 13014 Touchstone View near Voyager and North Gate.

Close behind with just one violation were the Chipotle at N Academy and Jamboree, the Carl’s Jr. At 306 N Nevada downtown, and the IHOP near Fillmore and I-25. 

IHOP has a menu with food options that fit any meal of the day, but according to General Manager Jammie Martinez, the biggest draw is still the breakfast item that puts the “P” in International House of Pancakes. 

The restaurant offers rotating flavors of the flapjacks. 

“Chocolate chip, strawberry banana, we have New York cheesecake, snickerdoodle, tres leches, anything you can think of, we do that here,” says Martinez. 

Along with pancakes and toppings, the kitchen is also full of timers, boxes of gloves, and schedules to verify food temperatures or the chemical content of sanitizers. 

While IHOP is a chain, Martinez says at the location on Chestnut, food service and safety is personal. 

“I eat here.  My children eat here,” she says, “I want to know that we're safe, and I would do as many hours as needed to make sure that we all are up to par with the standards for health safety.” 

The featured pancake flavor of the month for March... is 'Bananas Foster'. 

Click here to check out any of this week's inspections.